@firecrouch:
If you're reading something without an approved form of distribution that potentially takes away from the publisher making a profit off a potential customer, than I'd say that counts as stealing.
Fine. You start importing the volumes every week from Japan and paying the shipping charges and waiting for delays and customs and then translate the text into a language you can read and tell us how that goes.
We'll all follow suit if that works out.
You just described OneManga in a nutshell so it goes without saying that they're stealing.
There's a difference between archiving thousands of chapters, relying only on that archive… and reading them the week they come out.
If you're reading the manga online and then buying the manga I'd say you're stealing and then making up for it by then buying it.
How the hell are you stealing what you're buying.
Oh my god, I watched Avatar for free on Nickelodeon when it aired. I must be stealing it when I then pay 50 bucks for the dvds.
Nothing's lost in this form of stealing since you didn't take a physical product away from a merchant.
What?
And we really have no idea if VIZ is ignoring the possibility of putting legal simulchapters online.
Because the internet just appeared last night, right?
In fact they're doing it with Rin-Ne, we have no idea why that's the only one they're doing but I'm sure there's a logical explanation. From what I heard someone asking a VIZ rep at Anime Expo it was a loaded question she couldn't really give an answer to. My assumption is their hands are tied by their parent company. Who knows.
Funimation is able to simulcast the anime. Surely thats even more complicated since there's even more license holders involved, and much much larger bandwidth concerns.
And as I said before, and you yourself did, THEY DO IT WITH RIN-NE already. (Not that anybody cares about the series, Takehashi's phoning it in.)
It's perfectly reasonable to want to stay current, but I don't see how that justifies reading scanlations as long as you know you're gonna get the official product.
Then stop reading them and take your incredibly faulty moral high ground that makes no sense.
Also, when they are literally YEARS behind the current source material, and the rest of the internet releases details, its unreasonable to expect the reader to stay that far behind.
Until LAST WEEK, Viz was literally 9 years behind on One Piece. Even now after a solid 7 months of sped up releases (and me spending hundreds of dollars on the product!) they're still a full year and some change behind.
Its like if Harry Potter volume 6 were only now coming out in America but the series had already finished in Britain, there's no way to avoid "Snape Kills Dumbledore!" or in this case "Ace dies!"
It might have been passable to be way behind in the pre-internet age, but that doesn't cut it anymore.
That's not to say the American publishers shouldn't stay as current as possible, because that's what readers want. But it's not always that easy.
Yes. Yes it is. Especially in the digital age. Material takes weeks to go to the printer. There's incredibly lengthy ammounts of time to get it between publishers. Take 20 minutes on an ftp to tranfer files.
And I don't see how it's like going to the movies or the library. At a movie you're buying a ticket that goes to the people that made the movie.
You see something in a theatre once. And if you liked it, you might just buy the dvd. But then once you own the dvd, you can watch the movie 30 times, or show it to friends who never paid to see it at all. Is THAT stealing?
Or, what if you never see a movie in the theatre, and JUST buy it when it comes to dvd, without having seen it before? Is that stealing, because you DIDN'T see it in the theatre also?
No, because you BOUGHT IT AT SOME POINT.
(I'd also argue that when you go to a theater, you're paying for the theater experience of the giant screen, surround sound, dark room, popcorn, 3-D glasses, and audience participation, as well as the movie itself. Its not just the movie being paid for there, but thats an entirely different point.)
At a library you're getting a donation.
Most libraries buy many of their books with government funding, actually.
With scanlations you're getting something that was taken without permission.
Oops. I heard this song on the radio I liked and then went out and bought it. Guess I'm stealing it since I heard it on the radio.
Hey, I went into a bookstore and flipped through a magazine, and then decided I didn't want to buy it. I guess that's stealing too, since I sampled the product, and then decided I didn't want to.
And I was at the grocery store last week, and they gave out a sample of cheese and sausage. I know how these things taste and buy them usually, but I took the sample anyway! Totally theft.
Yes it is like going out, sampling and buying it if you like it, but not exactly the same.
Yes it is. Its the only reasonable access we have to the product.
If we lived in Japan and could buy the mag on any street corner, it'd be one thing. But we don't.
I never said that people should go out and buy Japanese Jump
Then what the hell ARE you suggesting?
And they probably cancelled "Zatch Bell" cuz it wasn't selling well enough. In that case you can't blame VIZ.
After taking the buyers money for X volumes, then failing to live up to their end of the bargain. "Keep giving us money, and we'll keep giving you product that you are supporting us for."
Besides, publishers can do low end print runs for minimal profit to meet demand. You can print 300 copies of a book and not lose money if you expect 150 sales. You don't make very much profit, but its not a loss.